0.4.1

Rank Battles: Healthy Competition

It is common knowledge that team effort is very important in World of Warships. Effective cooperation between allies affects the outcome of a battle no less than the individual accomplishments of each player. It is great when the matchmaker puts us together with strong allies: we can move through the battle like a steel wave smashing enemy ships. On the other hand, it can be very disappointing to win a few medals, cause some serious damage, and still face defeat. To play with seasoned players, you can always create a division or even apply to a tough clan. But not every player is ready to make such a commitment to experience a great game. In Update 0.4.1, those players who wish to find their match, both among allies and rivals, with no extra effort will find what they are looking for in Rank Battles.

Rank Battles is a season-long event available to all players not enlisted in divisions with Tier VI-VII ships and Level 9 accounts. All you need to do is pick a ship, select Rank Battles, and click Battle! Rank Battles are slightly different from usual battles: each team can have no more than 7 players, and the maximum number of aircraft carriers and battleships is limited to one and two respectively.



In addition to XP and Credits, all Rank Battles participants will earn stars. A star is awarded to each player on the winning team. When a player gets a certain number of stars, they move to the next rank which demonstrates their ongoing achievements. All ranks are divided into three groups. The first group is intended for beginners taking the first steps on their way to naval glory. It has milder conditions for reaching higher ranks. As opposed to the two senior groups where each defeat results in losing a star and, consequently, another rank, the first group doesn't threaten the player's progress. The second and third groups show higher competition among players, reaching its climax in the top ranks. Speaking of competition... Players get into battles only within their group of ranks. In fact, players are grouped based on victories. When players achieve certain ranks, they are awarded in-game resources. In future, the development team is planning to introduce some unique awards.



New Maps: Jungle Calling

In Update 0.4.1, the reach of naval battles will expand significantly, allowing players to lay their hands on two new maps.

The Strait map was inspired by the Mediterranean and Middle East Theater: here you can enter the battle near the Italian coast where the British Fleet defended Malta and carrier aviation led the first ever swarm attack against heavy ships.



The second map, Solomon Islands, is a representation of part of the archipelago of the same name which saw one of the major military campaigns of the World War II—the Battle of Guadalcanal.



While exploring the new maps, you might have noticed that the landscape in World of Warships has become more vivid—now there are trees on islands. This is another change that will notably improve the look of the game. Forests and jungles will grow on all maps with a suitable climate and in the vicinity of the Port if you set Graphics Quality to at least Medium.



Improved graphics on familiar maps is not the only thing that will make players happy. New Dawn and Fault Line were modified significantly.On Hotspot, the diagonal team arrangement and the Domination mode with five bases were removed.



Aviation: No More Single-Click Commands

Many would agree that the aircraft carrier is the most original and rare ship type in World of Warships. Their gameplay is reminiscent of a real time strategy rather than of a tactical shooter. However, not all their squadrons are fun to control. While bombers and torpedo bombers are more effective with skillful manual control, fighters are mainly used by players on a “launch and forget” basis. Update 0.4.1 fundamentally changes this approach. Now a player can order their fighters to use barrage fire by specifying an exact zone on a map just the way they do it for bombers and torpedo bombers.



The moment fighters approach the “attack window”, they will make a strike spending the major part of their ammunition and causing damage to all aircraft coming their way. When properly used, this technique will help players thin the enemy formation, even with only a few fighters. Also, the risk of being caught under barrage fire will make players control their squadrons more carefully and use them separately.

In addition, we have tried to resolve another dogfight issue, that is a great disparity in the effectiveness of fighters in adjacent tiers. Fighters have long found themselves in an unfavorable situation when facing enemy counterparts of higher tiers. Sometimes, it would seem that enemy “hawks” reign supreme in the air by destroying their rivals from inferior tiers and getting away with it. For Update 0.4.1 we have collected the necessary data and rebalanced parameters of all fighters. Now the damage they can cause increases more evenly depending on their level. Researching your aircraft is still important, but fighting off enemies from the next tier has gotten easier.



Rear gunners on many bombers and torpedo bombers have also been affected: the damage they cause has been recalculated upward.

However, fighter lovers might be saddened by the balancing of Japanese aircraft carriers of medium tiers. According to research, they demonstrate abnormally high battle performance even when used by less experienced players. This is why we increased the aircraft servicing time for squadrons and reconsidered the structure of air groups: now each air group has at least one fighter squadron.



Matchmaker: on the Way to Balance

The matchmaker is a component of the game that is responsible for assembling teams before a battle. No wonder that any shortcomings of the matchmaker get very negative feedback from players, who, from time to time, find themselves in a disadvantageous position and have to make great efforts to survive in battle. With the launch of the Open Beta Test, we could finally receive mass statistical data and continue working on identified problems. You'll be able to see the first results of our work in this update. Now, the aircraft carriers will be distributed by teams strictly symmetrically, both by quantity and by tiers. Thus, it will become impossible for one of the teams to have the only aircraft carrier in the battle or a more powerful air group. We also introduced an algorithm that will forcibly put a player on an optimally comfortable tier of battles (equal to the tier of their ship), if they played several battles in a row with higher tiers. This decision will undoubtedly increase the general comfort of gaming and powerleveling for all. By the way, you can read more about battle tiers in this article.



Finally, we improved the distribution mechanics of destroyers and cruisers in teams for a better balance. This change may not be global, but is still very welcome.



Balance Corrections: Back in Commission

Balance corrections are undoubtedly one of the most important and sensitive subjects of any major update. They always provoke a hailstorm of both positive and negative emotions from players, depending on changes made to their favorite combat machines. Be it as it may, these corrections are very important to polish the gameplay. We can't afford to "leave it alone" just to please part of the audience. However, other than worsening parameters of some Japanese aircraft carriers that we discussed earlier, Update 0.4.1 mostly brings good news.

According to the plan that was described in a separate article, we considerably increased the primary armament's precision at a range of up to three kilometers. Battleships that are most affected by this change, now have a reason for joy. They are not turning into sniper rifles of course; however, your guns will have a greater precision during exchanges at point blank range. Further tests and research will show the impact of this change on the gameplay.

Premium warships Yubari and Sims,game veterans, which many of our captains purchased together with the pre-order package, will receive some nice improvements.Destroyer Sims, which was looking a bit weak compared to her counterparts, can now boast two versions of torpedoes. She becomes the first Premium ship to have a variable module. New torpedoes will allow the old girl not to risk too much by engaging in close quarters combat. They have an enhanced range at the expense of speed and inflicted damage. Cruiser Yubari known, among others, for her good AA armament, can now prepare even warmer welcomes for enemy squadrons thanks to the Defensive Fire consumable. While we are on the subject of consumables, the action time of Hydroacoustic Search was increased for all cruisers, because many players considered it a controversial benefit.



Of course, not only Premium ships were improved in this update. Cruiser Omaha will get an increase in firing range when equipped with the most advanced hull to match her to the other ship of the series—Murmansk. Cruiser Furutaka, which taught many Japanese Navy enthusiasts coolness and peace of mind, now shifts the helm faster, and turns to the enemy more rapid-firing and agile primary armament turrets together with updated torpedoes. By the way, the same torpedoes are installed on the top configuration of destroyer Mutsuki, which provides a good opportunity to save on research. The Japanese Navy enthusiasts will most certainly appreciate another improvement: the rotation speed of primary armament turrets of Wakatake, Minekaze, and Mutsuki was increased. The latter also received a bonus to the reload time of torpedo tubes.

The changes of U.S. destroyers deserve a more detailed description. In general, we registered some decline in popularity and battle performance for these warships, which were always famous for excellent primary armament guns and their ability to both act as part of the team and hunt light enemy ships on their own. Low-tier destroyers Samspon and Wickes will get increased fire rate and gun rotation speeds. Their colleagues starting from Tier V will have two variants of top hulls. The alternative variant will have additional AA armament at the expense of the main battery. At the same time, the Engine Boost consumable will be replaced by Defensive Fire. Undoubtedly, these improvements will allow the Americans to fully use their versatile primary armament guns against enemy aviation. However, captains who want to concentrate their efforts on hunting down enemy destroyers can select main top hulls equipped with Engine Boost and standard artillery armament that are now necessary in order to get to the following level. Apart from that, the action time of Smoke Screens of all U.S. destroyers was increased.

Still, we had to do some fine-tuning. Minekaze, a too effective, elusive, and dangerous Japanese destroyer, will lose her top torpedoes and three kilometers of range with them.The traversing angles of her torpedo tubes were reduced a little, while the detection distance was increased by almost one kilometer. It's cool to be a ninja, but it's time to draw a line. Mutsuki's concealment was modified in the same way. Our research showed that the Japanese national bonus to the chance of causing fire with high-explosive shells needed to be balanced, that's why it was reduced depending on gun caliber. Cruiser Mogami, the terror of Tier VIII, will have to be more careful now, as the reserve durability of her primary armament turrets was decreased, while the previous Japanese cruiser Myoko will have a lower rate of fire. As for the U.S. Fleet, the test results showed that the rate of fire and the primary armament turrets’ rotation speed of battleship Wyoming needed to be reduced a little.

UPDATED: According to the latest plans we plan to increase visibility of destroyers Minekaze and Mutsuki by not much only +300 meters instead of +1000.



Other Changes

Gameplay

After long reflections and several tests we are ready to introduce a solution to the map edge problem. Here is a reminder for those of you who didn't encounter this issue: in the current version of the game, a ship that is set against a map's edge starts to slide along it at an unconventional angle, which makes targeting it difficult. Many players use this peculiarity to their advantage, but Update 0.4.1 will render this kind of behavior useless. From now on, any ship contacting a map edge will be correctly processed by the targeting system. You can set the usual target lead and fire at will. We believe this feature will stop drift enthusiasts in World of Warships as it no longer provides any advantage.



Game Client Performance

The optimization was for architecture and the data storage mode this time. We reworked the game client and now it requires about 50% less disk space, thanks to archiving a multitude of small files.



Interface

We made the first steps towards updating performance and integral characteristics of ships in the Port. We added several important performance characteristics, such as parameters for aviation torpedoes. The best thing is that the interface will now display changes to characteristics depending on installed upgrades and consumables on the base level. For now, there will be no preview, nor separation between base values and modifiers. Last, but not least, we updated the player statistics summary in the profile and made it much more informative.



Sound

The sound changes are aimed at improving the game experience, as usual. We updated the sound in general, changed the sound of flying shells fired both by you and by the enemy. We added sounds for jet planes and recorded several new music tracks.